Bergfrau and Soup
by Soubrettina
Summary: In which Anna has unwanted thoughts, Sven does the grown-up thing, Elsa is as mysterious as ever, Hans is still full of surprises, and Kristoff may have hold of the wrong end of the stick. Set, oh, a couple of hours after the Great Thaw.


When Kristoff finally made it through the great castle gates and headed for the main doors, it caused a bit of a stir as clearly nobody knew what exactly was to be done with him- clearly by rights a guest of the Princess Anna, just not the sort of person who usually got an invitation- though at last they took the sensible option and directed him to the room clearly designated for removing and drying cloaks- already full as it was with steaming woollens that were suddenly not required.

It was a relief to get his hide coat off at last, in the muffled quiet of the room where the smoke of the wood-stove didn't quite mask the stench of drying wool. It was a good, quiet place for the thinking that he had to do, about everything that had been happening in the last few hours. He'd barely noticed in the past, but there'd always been times, after long and perfectly happy days with the trolls, when he'd gone for walks with Sven- now happily left in the royal stables sharing a manger with an enormous but very good-natured yellow stallion- because sometimes Sven was the only person he wanted to talk to. And sometimes, not even him- Sven also knew when he wanted to walk in silence and _think._

However, when the door clicked open, it seemed he wasn't going to get that now.

Anna barrelled in, shiny-eyed and, if Kristoff were any judge, still a little giddier than her average state, though it was hard to call- and behind her, following- actually lead by the hand, in fact- was the queen, almost certainly giddier than her average state (at least Kristoff really _hoped_ that was the case, to look at her), still trailing her impossible cloak (obviously nobody dared suggest that she take it off when she had a look like _that_ in her eye).

Anna let go of the Queen's hand and made to throw her arms round Kristoff's neck-

"Hey, what's this about?" He backed off to hang up his coat.

"You did it, then? _He's_… he's…"

"…been arrested. He's downstairs awaiting her Majesty's Pleasure-" Kristoff noticed that the Queen actually looked extremely pleased right now, so probably not the moment to draw attention to the idea. "Whenever she wants to deal with him."

Anna bounced up to him and managed that hug- and said:

"Didn't I hear _screaming_?" with far more dancing-eyed enthusiasm than might have been comfortable for that sentence- although Kristoff couldn't really blame her. In fact he had a strong sense that _something_ had happened between Anna and His Highness even beyond the obvious- something humiliating and nasty.

(_Was she going to tell him? Anna? Maybe, maybe not. Did it really matter? Well, what were the odds there would be consequences? Well, what if there were consequences? Would he stay to see whatever it was through?_

_Yes._)

"You did, and yes, it was him. And no, it wasn't anything I did." That was one of the things he wanted to think about. "It was Olaf."

"_Olaf?_"

"Olaf? What, my Olaf?" (_Okay_… now, the Queen might only have spoken a few words to the little snowman but… yes, he supposed so. Her Olaf.)

"Yes, but not how you're thinking. Olaf was just introducing himself."

"Introducing himself _how_?"

"The way he always does; he came round the corner-"

"'Hi, I'm Olaf, and I like warm hugs!'?" The Queen's impersonation was… unexpected- the voice was wrong but the intonation was strangely spot-on.

"…and I turned for half a second, and suddenly where I had a dripping wet prince catching his breath on the cobbles, I now have a wet prince clutching the top of a sloping roof, waving a scabbard about and screaming at a three-foot tall snowman. Which is all you need after a long day."

"_Hans_ is frightened of _Olaf_?"

"You think it's weird? I saw _how_ frightened he was of Olaf."

"If he thinks Olaf is scary, did he see Marshmallow?"

The Queen turned to her sister in confusion.

"Who's Marshmallow?"

"Marshmallow, your other snowman! You built him! You must remember?"

"Oh, _him_. If he was a him. I didn't know his name. He kept himself to himself, you see. I was happy with that at the time. Oh, but Hans did see him… got past him, in fact." The Queen suddenly looked alarmed. "Anna, I don't know what happened to him!"

"Hey," Kristoff managed to reach around the clinging Anna and laid his hand on the Queen's shoulder; her skin was just a little cooler than skin would normally be on a warm day, and her gown felt exactly like a gown made of unmelting snowflakes and shredded silk fibres _would_ feel. "They didn't have any fire up there, did they? Did they? Right, well, look at how Olaf sticks himself together after every mishap. He'll be fine." (Yes, she didn't need to worry for a moment about the thirty-foot snow-monster.) The Queen sighed.

"Thanks. You _are _kind to me. Anna will tell you, I do _worry_ so much." She looked a little distant, and for a moment the room was a little colder. Then she blinked, suddenly returning to the present. "You did get Prince Hans down of the roof, didn't you?"

"When the guards arrived. Just to make it a bit more difficult he'd turned the colour of ash and gone temporarily blind."

"_Gone blind_?"

"Said his eyes hurt anyway. Overplaying it, in other words. Very strange man."

At that, Anna shrugged away from him, muttering something about _should have left him to it._

"I _know_, I know that's what you feel like, okay, it crossed my mind, but Sven was doing all the work, and reindeer don't bear grudges."

"No?"

"Have you ever met a reindeer with a grudge?"

"Well, no."

"No, so that's why Sven just dived in there and hauled him out. Because it's, what did Elsa tell you?"

Anna rolled her eyes and parroted:

"_The grown-up thing to do."_

"And?"

"_Because leaving him to drown would cause a diplomatic incident."_

Elsa took her sister's hand.

"It's for the best, Anna. Stop thinking about him. Come and have lunch. Or dinner. Or breakfast, or whatever It is."

"There's… food?"

"Gerda says there's soup. A lot of soup."

"What sort?"

"Not any sort of soup, just _soup_. It's the sort of soup you get if someone orders that there will be six thousand portions of hot soup available at very short notice. Just eat it graciously."

"Oh. So no croutons, then?"

"I really couldn't say."

"So how is Olaf?" Anna said as they went up the narrow staircase in single file. "Did he take it personally?"

"Well, when it didn't _stop,_ he started shouting advice on climbing down. It didn't help; especially not when his nose started bleeding again."

"His…"

"I take it he didn't have a roman nose when you met him?"

Anna burst out laughing.

"You couldn't have just let him fall, could you?"

"Hey," Kristoff tugged the back of Anna's dress. "You're starting to sound like you're enjoying this."

She turned to him with a look that wasn't quite playful.

"I am enjoying it."

"_Anna_…"

"Don't _Anna _me, you don't how it… you _don't know…"_

Elsa looked over her shoulder, and pulled the door at the top of the stairs closed. She came down, with the sound of the world's tiniest avalanche, and ran a hand up her sister's arm.

"Anna?"

Anna suddenly seemed to wilt, like she'd done when she was starting to freeze. She looked so lost and confused that for a moment Kristoff felt a tremor of worry that she wasn't as healed as they'd thought.

"Elsa, he's _right. _I don't like being happy at the idea of someone all bloody and drowning, and that I put him there. What's happening to me? It's like he's _given_ me a bit of the way he thinks, you know?"

"I think I'm starting to see."

"Horrible. Is this what they mean when they talk about catching a social disease?"

"No! No, it's really not! No…" Kristoff stopped. _Hey_, _come on, that was quite funny. Though she probably won't think so when she finds out._ "I really wouldn't put it that way, if I were you. You might really regret that in the context of Prince Hans." _Unless it… no, do not need to think of that._

Elsa kissed her on her cheek.

"Will you tell us?"

She told them.

By the time she'd finished, they'd sunk down to sit on the stairs, with Anna resting her head on the Queen's sparkling bosom as if she'd done it a thousand times. Queen Elsa was stroking Anna's hair, and her eyes were closed, her face inscrutable as an egg; only the tiniest wisps of frost appeared on Anna's braids before melting away.

"My little love," she whispered into Anna's hair. "If only you knew how wrong he was."

_Yes; he really was, wasn't he? But Anna, abandoned there by everybody, wouldn't have known that. No comeback, no comeback at all._

Anna wasn't crying- she barely even sighed.

"I don't even hurt about that anymore; I don't think I even loved him by then, not really. Maybe I was expecting to- I did go back to him. I thought that he was my husband and I belonged there, and that I _should _be loving him- and I should forget that…" Her wondering eyes met Kristoff's, and… hastily dropped away.

_Oh. Oh, really? Well, that would… wait until her sister wasn't holding her._

"You've been so brave, my darling," Elsa said. "I'm so proud of you."

Anna raised her face and looked into Elsa's eyes- then suddenly it seemed to catch her right there; she _shook_, and burst into tears- not whimpers, not the groans of despair that Elsa had made down on the frozen fjord- just big, soggy, gurgling noises, with her palms pressed over her face. Elsa clung to her, her face suddenly quite abstracted, and-

-and that was when there was such a sudden drop in air-pressure that the downstairs door flew open into the room and there came in a burst of light, not blue but white, and a wind that smelled of high meadows and heather and honeysuckle.

Anna looked up in surprise.

"What did you do, Elsa?"

"…no idea. I've never felt power like _that_ come through me before."

"Kristoff, will you go and look?"

"Me go and look? Why do I have to look?" Probably one shouldn't say that to royalty, even royalty who were leaning on you, but he just had.

"I'll start with the fact that you're sitting at the bottom of the stairs and you'll have to get up if I'm to move my legs."

Well, alright then- he barely rolled his eyes when he pulled himself up at all.

"Well?" Anna called as he got to the door. "What do you see?"

"Nothing! Nothing, everything's as it should be, but-" There was just one thing. "These weren't here before. That's weird." He came back in carrying the stem of flowers he'd just picked, that had been sprouting through the flagstones like a weed.

"What is it?"

"It _looks _like Bergfrue. That never grows at this altitude."

Anna looked back at the stairs.

"Elsa?"

The Queen gave an articulate shrug. If she were Sven she would have been saying: "I don't understand, there's a lot I still don't understand, but it's not a problem, is it?" (Had he really just thought that? Queen Elsa speaking Sven?)

Anna shrugged, took Elsa's hand to lead her upstairs.

"Come on, I'm hungry now."

"Good! There really is a _lot_ of soup!"

_**She**__ was engaged to a man who thought her only attractive feature was her inheritance,_ thought Kristoff, watching Anna's retreating back.

_What an idiot._

"Kristoff, are you coming or what?"

"I'm there!"


End file.
